“What do you mean, Uncle Gerald? I thought you said you were so sorry for him—that he was losing so much.”
“More in idea than in fact—much, everything in imagination, this house—which he calls, no doubt, the house of his fathers.”
Mab looked round on the stately drawing-room which was full of a hundred beautiful things, a long room with a row of windows looking out over the wide landscape, divided and kept in proportion by pillars supporting a roof which, it had been the pride of a previous generation to tell, was painted by an Italian artist in the best taste of his century. “But isn’t it the house of his fathers?” she said.
“I suppose so, for as much as that is worth.”
“Oh, Uncle Gerald! although we had always very nice houses, papa never thought there was anything equal to—”
“Yes, I know,” he said, hurriedly, and paused a moment to remember. He went on by and by, with a voice slightly broken. “We were all brought up there from our childhood. Even that, Mab, is more in appearance than in reality. A man may get very little satisfaction even out of the place where he was born.”
Mab regarded him closely with her shrewd eyes. They were not beautiful eyes, they were rather small, but very blue, with a frosty keenness in them; and they saw a great deal. “You don’t take a very bright view of things in general,” she said.
Upon which he laughed and told her that he was an old grumbler, and not to be listened to. “Suppose I was to tell you that a ball every night (or half a dozen of them) would not make you perfectly happy, and that even your first season might bore you—”
“Uncle Gerald, I have always heard that you were very fond of society. Did your first season bore you?” she asked.
“Not at all, not half enough, and—I am not sure that it would now, which is a confession to make at my age. Hush! not a word about that. I wish you to be kind to the young Pentons, remember, that is all. The little girl will be shy and the poor boy may be morose, I shouldn’t wonder.”